Under Camelot's Banner
Page 41
He was crossing the yard with yet another bucket of water from the well when the shout went up, and the whole company ran to point and stare.
Out on the headland, there was now a splash of blue and white against the wall of the square, grey fortress. The banner of Queen Guinevere hung out beneath the clouded sky for all to see.
“God bless Queen Guinevere!” The cry rang out from some anonymous throat. “Hurrah for Queen Guinevere!”
Soon they all took up the cheers. Many embraced, or gripped arms and slapped shoulders, with all the cheer of those who found the war they had come to fight was diverted. A plump maid with roses in her cheeks grabbed Colan’s hands and swung him around in a merry dance. For this, he rewarded her with a clear, smacking kiss on her pink mouth. She grinned at him and whisked away, but not without a glance over her shoulder saying she’d be glad to see him again.
After that, the work picked up speed. Now everyone was readying the place for the queen’s triumphal return. The golden, Gaulish knight, Lancelot, rode out with the thinnest of his squires, a handful of men-at-arms, and spare horses, presumably to meet the queen and learn her pleasure. Colan helped with preparations for the hasty feast, finding the boards and trestles for tables, lighting fires, and wrestling iron tripods and iron kettles into place.
When the fresh cheering began, he ran out of doors with everyone else to see Queen Guinevere ride into Tintagel. Beside her rode King Mark, looking dazed and a thousand years older than when Colan had seen him.
I will give the queen her due. She has managed what all the noblemen of the Dumonii could not.
But the cheering around him fell quickly to a hush, and as the little procession rounded the final turn of the earthworks, Colan saw why.
Behind the queen came the men at arms, bearing on their shoulders a litter laid with sheep’s skins. On it, her eyes closed and her hands neatly folded, lay his youngest sister.
Colan went down on his knee with all the others around him. What’s this, sister? Have you escaped me?
An anguished cry rang out and a black-haired man plunged forward from the crowd running up to the litter.
“No!” he cried. “No!”
“Gareth,” growled Sir Lancelot.
But Gareth did not seem to hear. The litter bearers set her down, and Gareth gripped Lynet’s hand hard for a moment, a kind of blind panic filling his face. He swung round on his knees to face the queen on her grey mare.
“Her mirror!” Gareth cried. “For the love of God, Majesty! Give me her mirror!”
The queen looked blankly down at the panicked man. Then, as if reaching some difficult decision within her own heart, she put her hand into her silken girdle and drew forth a shining silver circle. Gareth snatched it from her and dropped once more onto his knees at Lynet’s side. He folded her unmoving hands around the pretty thing.
“Ryol!” Gareth cried. “Ryol!”
All around him, people stirred and murmured. He heard Gareth’s name and Lynet, and the word “lovers,” repeated over and over. His brows rose as he looked at the young man clutching Lynet’s still, white hands and bending his brow down to touch them.
Is it true, Sister? Should I be seeking my revenge from this one for dishonoring you?
Then, ever so slowly, Lynet’s chest began to move. Breath heaved in her and her eyes fluttered open. The people cried and some cringed back. Everywhere, hands flew making the sign of the cross. Colan could not remember to move this time. He just stared as Lynet raised her head and lifted her free hand to Gareth, touching his cheek briefly before she fell back, and her eyes closed once more.
A woman darted forward — a maid of some sort by the look of her dress — to grip the edge of the litter. The queen nodded to the bearers, saying something Colan could not hear. They lifted Lynet gingerly, all wearing expressions of amazement and no little fear. The man, Gareth, made to follow, but Sir Lancelot moved his horse into the younger man’s path. Whatever the knight said, the man’s face creased in a struggle that seemed to Colan to be similar to the one the queen had undergone in handing over the mirror.
Then, Gareth bowed, and walked past the knight, following the litter, and leaving Sir Lancelot to stare at his back.
Well, my sister, you certainly have inspired something!
While the rest of the crowd pointed, stared, and whispered their rumors, Colan sauntered over to the paddock where the horses had been penned. The black mare trotted up to the wicker fence and ducked its head. He laid his hand on her neck.
So, now do you see? murmured Morgaine in his mind.
That I do, my lady, he answered in silence as she had taught him on their ride together.
It is for you to remove her, and put her to a good use. I will take care of all the rest.
It shall be done.
Guinevere thinks that because I have yet failed to take her home, she will have mine. She will pay for that arrogance. The horse tossed its head again and whisked around, rejoining the loose herd. Colan bowed his head once and strolled back into the hall. Amid a wealth of torches and rushlights, Queen Guinevere and King Mark sat on carved chairs while the folk of the hall moved hurriedly about them, except for the three knights, who had come to stand before the royals and hear their orders.
There, surrounded by those who would have been his enemies had they but known him, Colan squatted beside the fresh fire of the hearth and got ready to wait.
Lynet spun in the darkness like a willow leaf in a gale. In the giddy, directionless motion of her soul, random flashes of sight overcame her — a battle, a love, a birth, a street in a sun drenched city somewhere. They meant nothing to her. Guilt was gone, and fear with it, but so too was warmth and touch and self, and she knew that if she flew in this way too much longer she would have no self. There would be nothing left but the darkness and the shadows of time, and she had left something undone. Something important lay waiting back in the clay.
If only she could remember what it was. She should ask someone; the farmer, milking maid, the knight, the mother, the squire, the serving man in the stone hall …
The serving man. A dark-haired man in an ochre tunic who walked in a garden of summer and on a hill of sorrows.
Ryol?
I am here. She could not see him. She saw a woman cradling a babe in a cottage. She saw a man crouching in the bracken, his hand on a snare’s thong, waiting for the partridge. She could not see Ryol.
Where am I?
You are in the high house of Tintagel. You fell. Your maid sleeps beside the fire.
I cannot find myself.
I know, he answered gently.
She had once known where she was. It seemed a long time ago. The memory was already fading, along with all other things that came before this turbulent darkness. There had been another darkness there, but it had moved differently, she thought, and she had moved differently within it. What happened?
You saw too much. Mortal flesh cannot see all there is to be seen and keep its sanity. Then Ryol went silent, and she found she remembered this straining silence of his from before.
What is it?
Someone is coming, he said slowly.
Curiosity brushed weakly against her spinning self. She saw a circle of standing stones and a woman raising a knife to the moon. She saw a man holding a white staff peering from the mouth of a cave. But these were not right, not of the place or time where she had left herself. Who is it?
Gareth, Ryol answered.
The name froze her for the barest instant. She saw him, boy and man, she saw him, all of him all at once, and most especially she saw his smile, and his summer brown eyes full of the wonder of love. She remembered what it was to stand beside him and know the warmth that could not reach her here. Take me to him.
I cannot, Ryol told her. There is not enough of me left. You must bring yourself.
Back to the cold. Back to the clay to be plucked at by the shadows of the dead that surrounded Tintagel. I don’t want to.
&nbs
p; You must, Lynet. You must return fully to yourself, or you will not be able to anymore. I will help as I can, but you must try.
Pain, weariness, the unbearable heaviness of her own body folding around her, dragging her down into clay. The cold, dull isolation of her own senses blocking and blinding, tying her to themselves and the heavy, sluggish beating of her heart. She did not want this. She did not. She did not want to open her eyes to the ghosts and her ears to the voices that hurt so badly.
Then, something reached her more gently than either of these. A sense of motion, a familiar scent, a presence moving softly in the darkness. Understanding. A name. The name Ryol had given her just a moment ago.
“Gareth?”
“I am here, Lynet.”
Here, once again in the darkness, the stillness, beside the bed she lay upon. Daere — she remembered Daere now — would be livid that he was here. “You should not be.”
“So I have been told.” There was a smile in his voice, but something had happened. She could feel it, and she could reach for it, find the shadow of it, or the shadow of it might find her. A shudder ran through her.
“The queen has sent for your sister,” he told her quickly.
Laurel. Laurel would understand. Laurel would know what to do. “Thank God.”
His voice came closer. Did he kneel? She felt his breath on her cheek. He picked up her hand. “What is happening, Lynet?”
She swallowed. Heart and throat constricted together as the memory of Tintagel poured forth into her thoughts. “It is the shadows, Gareth, my shadows. They do not remain in the mirror anymore. I’ve brought them out with me, and now I see them everywhere.”
“Do not see them, Lynet. See me.”
“I cannot see you.”
He laid his hand, warm, rough and strong against her cheek. He bent close, and she felt the warmth of his breath and his body before he kissed her, a long, slow, lingering kiss, gathering her close to him, wrapping his arm around her. She gave herself over to that kiss. Nothing mattered, nothing was, except the touch of his lips against hers, the strength of his arm supporting her. He laid his hand against her throat and she felt her pulse beating fast against his palm. He drew that hand down, between her breasts, across her belly.
“Do you see me now, Lynet?” he whispered.
And she opened her eyes, and she saw the faint light of the moon and the faded fire, and she saw Gareth, and nothing more.
“Yes,” she murmured. “Yes, I see you now.”
He kissed her again, his caresses growing stronger more urgent, more achingly, unbearably sweet. She found her arms again and wrapped them around him, answering his caresses with her own, her hands marvelling at the shape of his shoulders, his chest and back, his arms and thighs. There was no pain, no binding, no fear. There was only Gareth and the yearning, blissful need to bring him close, and closer still.
But it was Gareth who pulled away. “Lynet,” he breathed her name, his lips brushing her cheek as he spoke. “No more, Lynet. I will not be able to leave you.”
“I want you, Gareth.” There were no other words in her, no other thought.
“I want you, but it cannot be like this, not in the dark and in shame, while you are so weak.” He spoke slowly, hesitantly, as if these were new thoughts for him. “Not here, not while so many believe you’re fallen in sickness. I will not do that to your name.”
She did not want him to be right, but she knew that he was. More than that, she understood how much it meant that he spoke such words to her. “Go then,” she whispered. But as she spoke a wave of fear overtook her. The shadows would come again. They were here now, waiting for her. Her weakened hand clutched the coverings convulsively, and found the mirror. As she gripped it she felt something else. Ryol. Ryol, back again to stand between her and the shadows. Gareth had done this. She was certain of it. He was her anchor and her shelter, as he had sworn.
He slipped away once more, moving carefully past Daere on her pallet beside the banked fire. He opened the door a bare crack, and slipped through, closing it soundlessly behind himself.
Daere snorted and turned over, and Lynet lay on her bed, her hand splayed across her belly, remembering.
Slowly, she drifted into sleep.
Gareth sat down on the corridor’s stone floor. He rested his back against Lynet’s door, and his arms on his knees. His sword lay on the floor beside him. It was going to be a long night. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Lynet was alive and safe. That knowledge would keep him awake as long as needed.
What he’d do in the morning … well he would worry about that then. This time, Sir Lancelot was not going to forgive him.
Lynet had woken on her litter almost as soon as he pressed her mirror back into her hand. But she was so weak, so white, he could not leave her, not until he knew she had been laid safely to rest. That had been the only thought in him as he followed her litter as it was carried toward the hall. Gareth hadn’t even seen his knight, until Sir Lancelot had put his horse directly in his path.
“That’s enough, Squire,” he’d said. “You have caused enough embarrassment. There will be time enough later for you to play the love struck calf. There is work to be done.”
But Gareth could only see Lynet on the litter that could so easily have been her bier being carried away from him. He had looked directly into his knight’s angry eyes, and he had stepped past him and walked away. A simple thing, done in front of the queen and all the court. He did not need to see the look on the great knight’s face. No victory he’d brought now mattered. He had disobeyed an order. He had done it knowingly and in company. He had felt the blistering heat of Sir Lancelot’s anger against his back as he walked away.
Oh, no. He had given away his second chance. Gareth scrubbed at his scalp. In the morning he would have to decide what to do next.
But Lynet had kissed him, and it had been achingly sweet, going straight to his heart. He had never known a touch like that, as he had never felt the lack of that final pure note of love in all the other caresses he had known. Lynet gave him of herself, freely and fully, and would have given much more, if she had been stronger and he had been but a little bit weaker. Even now his blood rushed at the thought of her lying just beyond the door in her woolen underdress, her hair in its single plait, her eyes wide in the darkness, straining to see …
The sound of a footfall reached him and Gareth scrambled to his feet, gripping his sword. The cold, narrow corridor here made a t-junction, and coming down the other way he could see a moving light. He held back, waiting to see who it was. He’d been laughed at already for his insistence at playing armed guard to Lynet while she was surrounded by Camelot’s army and all the profoundly relieved and grateful inhabitants of Tintagel. He let them laugh. They did not understand the strength of what pursued her. The queen knew, and she had not laughed, nor forbidden him this post.
The light drew closer, and Gareth saw Queen Guinevere herself walking down the corridor. She wore a single garment of deep blue girdled with a simple silver chain. Her hair all unbound and uncovered, fell to her waist. For one wild moment he wondered if she came to check on her. Then he saw her feet were bare. The sight of them tightened his throat uncomfortably, and he wanted to look away. She was the queen. She was his aunt. He should not see her this way. Why would the queen come barefoot to see him? He looked mutely up into her face. She smiled at him, the heavy shadows turning her eyes black.
“Where is Sir Lancelot, Gareth?” she asked. Her voice was soft, musical. He had never heard her sound like this before, as he had never seen her barefoot with her head uncovered. He had never seen her so beautiful. The blood Lynet’s kiss had set to rushing, surged through him that much faster.
Belatedly, he remembered to kneel. “I don’t know … Majesty,” he stammered. “He is much angered with me.”
She chuckled, a low, throaty sound. “Then we must make amends between you. Come,” she held out her hand. “We will find him together.”
From the darkness, Colan watched his lady in the queen’s disguise lead Squire Gareth away. He wished the young man well, for he knew what it was like to be so snared.
Silent as a shadow himself, he slipped up to Lynet’s unguarded door. He laid one hand on the wood, listening. When he was satisfied no one stirred within, he pushed it gently open. Its hinges creaked long and low, and he froze, but still, there was no stirring, no interruption in the deep and gentle breathing.
Your maid must be very tired, Lynet, he thought as he stepped around the form of the sleeping woman on her pallet by the banked hearth. You should not work her so hard.
Those last coals under their ash blanket gave him just enough light to see Lynet on her bed. Her hands were folded over her fur coverings, wrapped tight around her mirror.
Colan looked down on her and sighed. “We are like the children in the old stories, sister, are we not?” he breathed. “So long ago God had not yet finished the world, there were three children. The eldest could talk to the sea. The middle child could talk to the wind, and the youngest … what could the youngest do, Lynet?”
He laid his hand on her brow. She did not move. “We could have made good cause together, the two of us with our weakness, surrounded by so many with such terrible strength. We could have joined together, had you permitted it, and our weakness we might have brought them all down. But we hung separately, and now all either of us can do is serve.”
Gently, he eased his hand beneath hers. As soon as his fingers found the cool surface of the mirror, he snatched it away.
Lynet came awake at once. She held up her empty hands, staring at them in mute horror. She groped frantically among the furs. Colan lifted the mirror so it caught the faint firelight. Lynet’s head jerked up. She saw the glass in his hand.